Lenka Schmalisch

M.A. et M.A.

I am reading for a PhD in the History of Science and Medicine at Durham University with focus on Domestic Health, Women and Nationalism in Late-Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth-Century Bohemia. My project is a case study of Magdalena Rettigova's (1785-1845) autobiographical memories with focus on the aspects of mental and physical health. More specifically, studying Rettigova's preserved handwritten autobiography in old German Kurrent Script, I am exploring memories of her so far little known and little examined early life. I focus on various events and relationships from Rettigova's childhood, youth and adolescence which she retrospectively believed had a strong impact on her mental and physical wellbeing as well on shaping her own self and personality. Examining what Rettigová’s memories reveal about the ways she negotiated the normative expectations of her time in relation to her mental and physical wellbeing, my project seeks to learn about female agency, extending our understanding of what was it like to grow up as a girl in Bohemia in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.
As a Leverhulme doctoral scholar I am affiliated with the departments of Philosophy, History, the School of Modern Languages & Cultures and the Centre for Visual Arts and Culture.

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